The present invention relates to securing protected health information (PHI) data, and more specifically, to securing protected PHI data based on a software designation.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that health information remain protected and confidential when stored in computer systems. However, such personal information may be susceptible to exposure under certain circumstances. For example, when an operating system experiences a failure, a mechanism is used to collect data from the computer's memory to help assist in troubleshooting and repair processes. Similarly, a program that crashes or otherwise fails may send crash-related data that can be stored in memory. If the memory includes protected health information, the data dump could violate the privacy requirements of HIPAA.